Last week several news organizations including Ars Technica shared information about Facebook’s new passive listening feature.

From their report:
“Facebook has added a new feature to its mobile app as of Wednesday that uses a phone’s microphone to identify ambient TV shows, music, or movies and include them in status updates. The feature is off by default, though the app offers to turn it on in an intro screen that it pops up for users.”

This means if you use Facebook on your mobile device, you should take notice in the coming weeks and choose NOT to use this feature if you are not comfortable with it. Many of us are used to just bypassing these sorts of pop ups without a second thought. This is one you may want to pay attention to before you agree to it.

Do you have or know someone who has an iPhone or iPad? If you or they live in either Australia or the UK, here’s a heads up. Make sure your device has a 4 digit passcode and back up your data to your computer. Secondly, enable multifactor authentication. Otherwise, you may end up losing it to a hacker who has hijacked your iCloud account.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, rather just one to show the different ways your data can be used against you.

What does this all mean for you? It should heighten your awareness of cyber security and the very real threats that exist out there today. How do we mitigate these threats? We do what we can to protect our data. Following is a simple list of steps you can take immediately to avoid becoming a victim.

Back up your data

This means not only data you physically have access to like your financial documents, family photos/videos, or your music – but also your online presence. Many social networks let you download the entire contents of your user profile. You should also consider redundant backup options such as physical backups and off site backups. Just remember to make sure both are secure.

Use 2-Factor Authentication

Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Paypal and more utilize 2-factor authentication. My first introduction to this was using an authenticator for my World of Warcraft account, which I opted for as soon as they were made available. I still use 2-factor on that account today. This Life Hacker article has a great rundown of all the places you should enable it. Do it now!

Hide Sensitive Information

While sites may require you to provide a birthday or email address, the also usually give you the ability to keep this information private. Those who need to know the year you were born or your private email address already have that information or can ask for it. There is no need for it to be out in the open for everyone to see. Also, don’t let sites save your credit card information. While it is an added convenience, as the case of @N above demonstrates, it can be used against you. Other advice he offered in his article was to call your institutions and require them to NOT share any of your personal information over the phone. That means birth dates, names, or partial information like last 4 of social or credit cards.

Be Wary of Strangers

This may sound odd as the whole allure of the internet is connecting with strangers. However, if you don’t know someone, you should be very cautious about letting them into any social network circle where they can find out more information about you as this can be used against you.

Be Careful Online

Don’t click on anything you can’t easily identify. Don’t submit information to sites you are not familiar with. Don’t trust things just because they come from people you know. Don’t download things to your computer without some sort of software protection installed.

In summary, treat your digital property much like you would treat your physical property. Follow the Hide Lock Take philosophy. It works for both your email and your car.

Salon recently featured an article (Salon.com) about a study (PDF) that reveals how Facebook monitors self-censorship by tracking everytime we type something, even if we decide not to post it. While it is understandable that people are concerned with this tracking of information that we do not share, I believe it is also important for us to understand that Facebook is not a free service. We pay for the opportunity to use this service by providing our precious data. Therefore, it is Facebook’s goal to gather and retain as much data as possible, even if that data is never explicitly shared.

Though I do not agree with their practices, as I am an advocate for the user and users rights when it comes to their data, I do understand them and contend that it is within their right to do this – even if it is an unsavory practice to perform. As a user, your rights and your power lay solely within the choice to use the product. If you want to retain ownership over your data, sharing it on a service where you provide said data for payment of using the service, is likely not the wisest choice. Keep that in mind when you type anything into any text box anywhere on the web, because as this example proves, that data may be saved even if you hit cancel.

Being the 2-factor security person that I am, I know many of you have probably read about Facebook, GMail, and Twitter passwords being hacked. Though you can’t do much about that (other than not have accounts with those services of course), there are steps you can take to keep those accounts secure even if someone else has your password. All that is required is that you have a mobile phone and that you set it up from your computer (I don’t know of a way to do this from the mobile side only).

Facebook:
Facebook users, to enable the 2-factor setting click on the lock icon and click on the link at the bottom that says “See more settings”.

Once there, click on the Security link 2nd from the top on the left.

Then click on Login Approvals.

There you will be given a checkbox to “Require a security code to access my account from unknown browsers”.

You can check that box and then choose which method you use to get your codes. I chose the code generator because that will work even if I only have access to WiFi, whereas receiving a text message may not. I would also at this time generate extra codes just in case you lose your phone. Save them in a place that will be easy to access, so you can get back to your account easily should you need to.

While you’re in the security section I would also suggest you check the active sessions and recognized devices. End activity on anything you don’t recognize. Lastly, setup your trusted contacts. Be sure to choose people who actually use Facebook regularly.

GMail:

GMail users who use their accounts on multiple devices may find this method a bit cumbersome, but it’s only cumbersome to setup. Once it’s done, you don’t have to make any changes unless you get a new device or wish to disable it.

Login to your GMail account and then find the cog icon under your picture on the upper righthand side of your screen and click settings.

Once there, click Accounts at the top and you will find security settings.

Clicking Account Recovery Options lets you set up your phone to use to recover your account should you forget your password or to challenge hackers. You can also add a recover email address as well as an alternate email address you can log in with. I would highly suggest doing both.

Clicking Other Google Account Settings will take you to a page that lists all of the settings for your Google identity. If you’ve never been here, I suggest you read it so that you understand more about the way Google views & uses your information. For our purposes today, click on Security from the menu on the left.

From there, scroll down to the bottom to find 2-Factor Authentication and turn it on.

After you set it up, you will want to create device / application specific passwords for your account so that you can log into your email through your phone, tablet, or other device that doesn’t use 2-factor authentication. You can click on the link visible in the screen shot above to get there.

Pro-Tip, you can use one generated password for all of your devices if you enter it into all of them at the same time. Caution though, if you do that and have to revoke it for some reason (you lose your phone), you’ll end up revoking it for all devices instead of just that one.

Twitter:

Login to Twitter and click the cog icon on the top right hand side of the nav bar.

Then select settings from the menu.

Then select Security and Privacy from the menu on the left.

Then select one of the two login verification options available.

Hopefully this was helpful to some of you. I know these settings can seem buried and intimidating if you’ve never used them before, but I suggest it is worth it to go through all of this trouble so that you don’t end up losing your digital life to someone else’s malicious activities.

“I am against censorship. In all forms. Not just for the right of masterpieces — high art — to be scandalous.

But what about pornography (commercial)?Find the wider context:notion of voluptuousness à la Bataille?But what about children? Not even for them? Horror comics, etc.Why forbid them comics when they can read worse things in the newspapers any day. Napalm bombing in Vietnam, etc.

“Communist authorities equally understood Elvis’s subversive manner, even as an Army private.When it was announced that Presley was bound for the U.S. base at Friedberg, the East German Communist Party accused the United States of plotting to undermine the morals of Red youth,’ Karal Ann Marling relates. ‘To show that this act of provocation would not be tolerated, party boss Walter Ulbricht ordered the arrest and imprisonment of fifteen teenagers who marched through the streets of Leipzig in 1959 shouting, ‘Long live Elvis Presley!’” (p. 268)

Cohen, R. D. (1997). The delinquents: Censorship and youth culture in recent US history. History of Education Quarterly, 37(3), 251-270.

“Rather than simply forbiddingyoung peopleto listen to certainforms of music,read certainbooks, or seecertainmovies, many families haveabdicated this responsibility tocivic action groups andthe government.Such arelinquishmentofauthorityoverindividualliveshasledtodenunciations ofvariousmedia forms, callsforself-regulation ofindividualmediums, andattemptsto ban completely some sexually explicitspeech.” (791)”Perhaps even more important than therightofAmericans to decide whattheywish to read, see, and hear for themselvesisthe factthat thisgeneration’s purity crusade is diverting national attention away from more important areas. Indeed, many individuals who believe in a government based on popular participation have not yet realizedthatby devoting so much energy to what is essentially the private business of American citizens,theirattention has been successfully diverted from participation in the political and economic planning processesofthenation.” (850)

Interesting that if you consider gaming, specifically violent video games, to be the topic at hand, these conclusions are as relevant today as they were over 20 years ago.

Well, being a PhD candidate means one thing and one thing only – now I have to write a dissertation. While yes I knew this was the next stage in the journey, I am not sure I am adequately prepared. I know that seems silly, I mean I have written a Master’s thesis and all. This one just seems (and is!) so much bigger and more daunting. I’m one of those people where the more daunting something seems the harder it is for me to get going on it. However, once I get going I’m usually FULL STEAM AHEAD!

Now to just figure out how to get going. One thing I’ve tried so far is to buy a few books on the subject of dissertation writing. Since this particular piece of writing is more traditional than say my past ethnographies, I really have to figure out the ins and outs of it and what is expected of me. While I’m sure there is likely some dissertation writing class offered by the university, I am not local and therefore cannot take advantage of that.

So far book 1 reads more like I textbook than I would like, but I’ll muddle my way through it anyway.

Book 2 seems good, but it has a lot of weird typo issues on the Kindle edition.

Book 3 I have yet to start. I’ll at least finish book 2 first before I try. Book 1 may take a little longer.

My goal is to have these finished by the end of September as I’d like to try to have my first three chapters written by the end of November so that I can defend my topic before the ends of this semester and hopefully get my IRB application submitted and turned in at the start of Spring (if not just before). This has to be done soon in order for me to start my research portion in January and hopefully be finished with the physical research aspect by end of February. Then analyze the rest of spring and into summer when I hope to finish and then start writing by fall to submit my first draft by the end of that semester or by the beginning of Spring 2015.

My goal is to graduate May/15. I’ll have finished my phd in 5 years if I can do that. That doesn’t seem so bad in my book. Especially given that I have a full time job and twins!